Last Weekend in Durban, 8-9 June
Comrades and parkrun; musseling in on Umdloti; Sunday seafood extravaganza
It’s almost mid-June, the nights are starting to cool in Durban, and it’s time to fly north to France. But what a memorable last weekend!
A Day’s Meandering
It’s not often enough that my beloved sister, our BFF Julie and I get together, what with Dale living in London, Julie in Durban and me all over the place. When we do, revisiting the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Meander has become a tradition – even if we have only one day for it.
And so the Three Mustgetbeers of old, with trusty Julie at the wheel of her Toyota RAV4, set off early one weekday morning for the KZN Midlands. The mission: to revisit a couple of favourite haunts and possibly find a few others.
Lunching Out
The Brasserie at The Edward; Fig Tree at Simbithi Eco Estate Golf Club; curry buffet at The Oyster Box
While in Durban, Roy and I tend to eat out nearly as often as at home. For one thing, it’s relatively affordable. For another, I seem to become lazier by the year when it comes to the sort of dinner-party entertaining I used to do so effortlessly (as I remember it, anyway). Let someone else do the kitchen slog.
Westward Ho! – Week Two, 9-15 July
Getting the Twingo to Villeton; skinning a cat in Nérac; snail soirée in Damazan; petrol-pump wine in boozy Buzet; three canal-side resto reviews; Bastille Day – let them eat paella; Allez les Bleus!
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Karanja’s 4.3m width being too wide for the river Baïse locks, we’d have to explore Nérac (see the featured photo above) and area a different way – by car. That entailed getting a train to Moissac to fetch the Twingo from its garage.
First, we’d have to find a place: (a) where we’d be happy to leave the boat while fetching the car, and (b) with good train links to Moissac. That place turned out to be a hamlet called Villeton.
Villeton is just 12km and two locks from Buzet – Berry and La Gaule. Going downstream, just before the bridge at PK146 is La Fallotte, which has pegs and free mooring. (Remember this for the return journey in a few weeks’ time.)
Castelsarrasin Revisited, 21-22 June
Daughter Wendy had requested that we “go somewhere on the boat this time” – a clear reference to her last visit during September 2017. That was shortly after Karanja’s epic three-month journey from England to Calais and thence to the south of France – when Roy and I were not keen on going anywhere at all!
Workers’ Repast in the Dordogne, 15 June 2018
I’d expected a restaurant that served subsidised meals for construction workers – les repas ouvriers – to be something like a British transport caff, all greasy linoleum and reeking of lard and bacon. But this is the Dordogne, France. Auberge d’Imbé exudes homey comfort, featuring white napery and charming service, at just €13 a head for a five-course meal that includes wine.
Roy and I had arrived in the Renault Twingo at his sister Lyndsay’s house in Saint-Geniés in time for Friday lunch. It’s a two-hour drive from Moissac, and we would have been earlier had we not been faced with a route barrée and a deviation, complete with signs.
Family-friendly Perth, WA
From my South African perspective, Australia in general – and perhaps Perth WA in particular – is a wonderfully child-friendly country, just the kind of place you’d want your children or grandchildren to grow up in.
The Dordogne, 6-9 September
Seven years ago, Roy’s sister Lyndsay and her husband John – two energetic, optimistic and successful entrepreneurs – bought an old house in Saint-Geniès, near Sarlat in the Dordogne. Transforming it into their dream home has been a labour of love, and for three days last week we were invited to share the dream with them.
Lake Leschenaultia… yes, it’s quite a mouthful
It’s been many years since I last spent the better part of a day at the beach, swimming and picnicking. Sand-fringed Lake Leschenaultia is located in Chidlow, in the Perth Hills, in the Shire of Mundaring (sounds distinctly hobbity, doesn’t it?), only a 45-minute drive from the city of Perth.
In case you were wondering what the excuse was to drag Roy out of his comfort zone, it was granddaughter Holly’s third birthday today.
Christmas in Perth
Of course, Christmas is all about celebrating family. (Unless you happen to be a Christian, in which case it might be about celebrating something else.)
So here I am with Roy, appropriately ensconced in the bosom of our family for the next month and more. We have our own self-contained guest suite – sounds a bit better than granny-flat, doesn’t it? – in the house of son Carl and his wife Carrie in Iluka, 30km north of central Perth, Western Australia.